October 25, 2018

Sleep is waking, waking sleepwe ride the broom across the deep,fair is foul and foul is fairby bee and cat, by hound and hare,the living die and the dying livewe turn the shears and the sieve,light is darkness, darkness lightto farers through the mystic night,up is down and down is upto seekers of the cauldron-cup,lords are churls and churls are lordswe leap across the bridge of swords,birth is death and death is birthwe tread the paths beneath the earth,Bride is Hag and Hag is BrideBetween the times we rage and ride,day is night and night is dayfor farers on the witching way.

October 13, 2018

Maidens stand still, they are lovely statues and all admire them. Witches do not stand still. I was neither, but better that I err on the side of witchery, witchery that unlocks towers and empties ships.

October 4, 2018

I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.A woman like that is not a woman, quite.I have been her kind.

October 2, 2018

On the whole I am inclined to think that a witch should not kiss. Perhaps it is the not being kissed that makes her a witch; perhaps the source of her power is the breath of loneliness around her. She who takes a kiss can also die of it, can wake into something unimaginable, having turned herself into some new species.

Emma DonoghueThe Tale of the KissKissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

June 7, 2018

The Witch who might draw skulls and bones in the dust, then sneeze it away…

…so she could feel their souls disinhibit, reinhabit their tremulous nostrils. Each soul, a vast warm fingerprint , felt different, she could roil it in her hand like clay; smelled different, Will could hear her snuffing his life away; tasted different, she savoured them with her raw-gummed mouth, her puff-adder tongue; sounded different, she stuffed their souls in one ear, tissued them out the other!

April 22, 2018

From an early age she had a remarkable capacity to explore the visionary depths of her subconscious mind, and the archetypal beings she encountered on those occasions became the focus of her art. It was only later that Roie was labelled a witch, was described as such in the popular press, and began to develop the persona which accompanied that description. As this process gathered momentum, Roie in turn became intent on trying to demonstrate that she had been born a witch. After all, she had somewhat pointed ears, small blue markings on her left knee, and also a long strand of flesh which hung from underneath her armpit to her waist – a variant on the extra nipple sometimes ascribed to witches in the Middle Ages.. .

.. .She had no time at all for organised religion, and the gods she embraced – a cluster of ancient gods centred around Pan – were, of course, pagan to the hilt. She regarded Pan as the God of Infinite Being. Traditionally Pan is known as the god of flocks and shepherds in ancient Greece. Depicted as half-man, half-goat, he played a pipe with seven reeds and was considered the lord of Nature and all forms of wildlife. He was also rather lecherous, having numerous love affairs with the nymphs – especially Echo, Syrinx and Pithys.

April 21, 2018

If the Kingdom of Pan had always been with me, it had been mostly in the background, overlaid by what was called reality: Now it had begun to emerge and pervade the latter. Awareness grew stronger and stronger that the tedious world of childhood didn’t really matter, because this held the essence of all that called to my inmost being: Night and wild things and mystery; storms; being by myself, free of other people. The sense of some deep hidden knowledge stirring at the back of consciousness; and all about me the feeling of secret sentient life, that was in alliance with me, but that others were unaware, or afraid of, because it was unhuman. So my first act of ceremonial magic was in honour of the horned god, whose pipes are symbol of magic and mystery, and whose horns and hooves stand for natural energies and fleet-footed freedom: And this rite was also my oath of allegiance and my confirmation as a witch. I remember my feelings on that occasion well, and they are valid today: If Pan is the ‘Devil’ (and the joyous goat-god probably is from the orthodox viewpoint) then I am indeed a ‘Devil’ worshipper.

April 19, 2018

There is no beginning, there is no end, There is only change. There is no teacher, there is no student, There is only remembering. There is no good, there is no evil, There is only expression. There is no union, there is no sharing, There is only one. There is no joy, there is no sadness, There is only love. There is no greater, there is no lesser, There is only balance. There is no stasis, there is no entropy, There is only motion. There is no wakefulness, there is no sleep, There is only being. There is no limit, there is no chance, There is only a plan.